This study uses a nonmarket valuation method to investigate the recreation values of the San Jacinto Wilderness in southern California. The analysis utilizes survey data from a stated-choice experiment involving backcountry visitors who responded to questions about hypothetical wildfire burn scenarios. Benefits of landscape preservation are derived using a Kuhn-Tucker...

Group-selection silviculture has many benefcial attributes and has increased in application over the past 30 years. One diffculty with group-selection implementation is the designation of group openings within a stand to achieve a variety of complex management goals. This study presents a new method for utilizing geospatial census stem map data derived from airborne...

A tree is a large, long-lived, perennial, compartmented, woody, shedding, walling plant. This definition is based on new tree biology concepts (Shigo, 1986a,b, 1991) and explains much about how mature trees function through their unique structure. When the tree begins its life, it is mostly leaf in mass (Fig. 7.la). As a tree grows in stature, it becomes mostly stem in...

Increased fire load and costs are anticipated under future scenarios of climate and other global changes. This requires increased efficiency in investments in wildfire management operations, and resolving the disconnect problem between science, policy and management.

Forest fires under climate, social and economic changes in Europe, the Mediterranean and other fire-affected regions of the world: FUME lessons learned and outlook. Toledo, Spain: Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha: 50-52.

In this paper, we investigate homeowner preferences and willingness to pay for wildfire protection programs using a choice experiment with three attributes: risk, loss and cost. Preference heterogeneity among survey respondents was examined using three econometric models and risk preferences were evaluated by comparing willingness to pay for wildfire protection...

Forest understory communities are important components in forest ecosystems providing wildlife habitat and influencing nutrient cycling, fuel loadings, fire behavior and tree species composition over time. One of the most widely utilized understory component metrics is understory vegetation cover, often used as a measure of vegetation abundance. To date, understory...

Recent advances in fire behavior are conforming strategies for forest management in nonindustrial private and public forests in the western United States. The strategy developed should include identifying the most cost-effective ways for allocating fire management budgets. In recreational areas, visitors? opinion should be included in forest planning decisions and...

Indigenous and traditional peoples worldwide have used fire to manipulate their environment for thousands of years. These longstanding practices still continue and have considerable relevance for today?s land managers. This discussion explores the value of documenting and understanding historic and contemporary fire use attitudes and practices of the varied cultural/...

In 1951, stream gaging was begun on five small headwater catchments on the Fernow Experimental Forest in West Virginia, to study the effects of forest management activities, particularly timber harvesting, on water yield and quality. Results from these watersheds, and others gaged more recently, have shown that annual water yields increase in proportion to the basal...

A methodology for incident decomposition and reconstruction is developed based on the concept of an "event-frame model." The event-frame model characterizes a fire incident in terms of (a) environmental events that pertain to the fire and the fire context (e.g., fire behavior, weather, fuels) and (b) management events that represent responses to the fire...

Most forestry property in Andalusia is privately held. One of the most important possibilities for economic development of rural areas is the use of pasture lands (dehesa in Spanish). During the spring?summer season, swine grazing takes advantage of grasses between the trees, and during winter (harsher times), they use Quercus tree fruit. Swine production has a direct...

In this paper, we present an improved procedure for collecting no or little atmosphere- and snow-contaminated observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor. The resultant time series of daily MODIS data of a temperate deciduous broadleaf forest (the Bartlett Experimental Forest) in 2004 show strong seasonal dynamics of surface...

Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Dougl. ex P. & C. Laws.) stands with late-seral features are found infrequently, owing to past management activities throughout western North America. Thus, management objectives often focus on maintaining existing late-seral stands. Observations over a 65 year period, of stands with not past history of harvest,...

To better evaluate the potential impacts of wildland fire in the San Bernardino National Forest, we developed a geographic information system (GIS) data layer containing nonmarket economic values for the San Jacinto Ranger District. Each pixel in the data layer contains an estimate of the most prominent nonmarket values at that location. This information can be used by...

Large fires pose risks to a number of important values, including the ecology, property and the lives of incident responders. A relatively unstudied aspect of fire management is the risks to which incident managers are exposed due to organizational and sociopolitical factors that put them in a position of, for example, potential liability or degradation of their image...

Traditional uses of the forest (timber, forage) have been giving way to other uses more in demand (recreation, ecosystem services). An observable consequence of this process of forest land use conversion is an increase in more difficult and extreme wildfires. Wildland forest management and protection program budgets are limited, and managers are requesting help in...

The geoecology of a serpentinite-dominated site in the Czech Republic was investigated by rock, soil, water, and plant analyses. The 22-ha Pluhuv Bor watershed is almost entirely forested by a nearly 110-year old plantation of Picea abies (Norway Spruce) mixed with native Pinus sylvestris (Scots Pine) in the highest elevations...